


The Kiss

by Brumeier



Series: Bite Sized Fic [103]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: First Kiss, Gay Rights, Historical Fantasy, M/M, Prompt Fill, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 14:19:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7718068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>LJ Comment Fic for Historical AU prompt: <i>Hawaii Five-0, Steve McGarrett/Danny Williams, The V-J Day kiss that was captured by a photographer was actually Steve and Danny</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kiss

Jesse lagged along at the back of his school group, taking time to study the exhibits that the tour guide was moving past too quickly. They were studying the second world war in school, and this trip to the museum was the capper to the unit. Jesse was really interested in it, because his great-grandpa Harvey had served in World War Two; he called it the last great war even though Nana Belle would scold him and tell him that no war was great. It seemed impossibly long ago to Jesse.

Great-Grandpa let him look through the old trunk sometimes. Great-Grandpa’s Navy uniform was in there, and a painted coconut he’d gotten in Hawaii. The scrapbook Nana Belle made was in there too, and it was full of pictures and Japanese money and Western Union telegrams and ration stamps. Nana Belle saved everything.

Jesse loved looking through that old trunk. It was like time-traveling back to a world where not everyone had a phone and even fewer had a television. There were no video games, people listened to music on records or the radio instead of streaming it, and everyone contributed to the war effort, even if it was just by rolling bandages or doing rubber drives. Maybe it was just the passage of time that leant a rosy glow to things, but Jesse secretly agreed with Great-Grandpa. People just seemed more united back then.

“On August sixth and ninth,” the tour guide was saying. “The US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During that same four day time period, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. That was essentially the end of the war. Japan announced its intention to surrender, and on August 14, 1945, people across the world celebrated Victory Over Japan Day, or V-J Day.”

Jesse nodded. Great-Grandpa had been overseas at the time, but Nana Belle had been a nurse in New York City, and she remembered the parades and the ticker tape and the spontaneous joy that people expressed. She herself had been overwhelmed with the knowledge that her husband would finally be coming home.

“This is arguably the most famous photograph taking during the V-J Day celebrations, one that captures the spontaneity of the moment. Life Magazine said that it was ‘as if joy had been rationed and saved up for the three years, eight months and seven days since Sunday, December 7, 1941’, which you’ll remember was the date of the attack on Pearl Harbor.”

“Who are the people in the picture?” Caitlin asked.

Jesse answered before the tour guide could. “Commander Steven McGarrett and Detective Daniel Williams. They were famous for that picture, my Nana told me.”

In the black and white photograph, McGarrett had Williams bent over backwards and was kissing him, right in the middle of Times Square.

The tour guide frowned at him. “At the time the photo was taken, photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt was unable to get the names of the couple. A year later they came forward, giving only one interview. Though they’d been complete strangers at the time of that kiss, they went on to have a long life together.”

“That’s so romantic,” Caitlin said dreamily, and her girlfriends giggled.

The guide moved on, but Jesse stayed behind. Nana Belle had told him that one kiss, captured forever on film, had big ramifications. It reignited the gay right movement. People rallied around that image, proof that gays weren’t deviants: they were brothers and fathers and decorated war heroes and well-respected police officers. Jesse didn’t know if it was true or not, but he liked to believe that the sailor and the policeman were the reason gay rights were enacted in the early 1960s. Maybe when he got home he’d ask his dads about it.

“Come on, Jesse,” his buddy Carl called. “You’ll miss the Howling Commandos exhibit!”

Jesse took one last look at the picture, and wondered if Commander McGarrett and Detective Williams had any idea how that one kiss changed the world.

*o*o*o*

“What are you doing, you animal?” Danny pushed the sailor off of him. And then had to reconsider, because he was incredibly good-looking. A fact Danny had missed when he’d been swept up in a kiss in the middle of the street.

It had been a really good kiss. The weak-in-the-knees kind his sisters sometimes talked about.

“The war’s over!” the sailor said gleefully, his grin wide. He didn’t seem to care that they were getting jostled by the thousands of other people looking to celebrate.

“That doesn’t mean you can just grab people and –”

A nurse pulled the sailor down by his ears and kissed him soundly, snatching his cap when she was done and dancing away with it.

“Or maybe you can.”

“Come on, copper. Buy a guy a drink?”

Danny didn’t know why he said yes. He was supposed to make sure the crowds didn’t get too unruly. It was easy enough for a mob to turn from cheerful celebration to mindless looting and mayhem, he’d seen it happen before. But the sailor was smiling at him, and no-one seemed to have cared about them kissing, and the Japs _had_ surrendered.

“What the hell. Let’s celebrate!”

They linked hands and Danny let himself get swept up in the excitement of the day. There’d be an official reprimand in his file for leaving his post, but in the end Lieutenant Commander Steven J. McGarrett was more than enough compensation for that.


End file.
